


Darkness Descends

by neednot



Category: The Fall (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, Oneshot, more of a companion piece, similar to 'Sharp' i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 13:58:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8105065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neednot/pseuds/neednot
Summary: Oh well I'm not well again
  
  and once more darkness it descends
  
  The ground is falling under me
  
  And I can't find the means to leave.
An introspection on Stella Gibson





	

You are born too early, fighting for life and screaming from your small lungs. They wonder if you will live.

But your father looks at you and calls you a fighter and says he knows you will.

And you do. 

You are the apple of his eye from the beginning, sometimes to your mother’s resentment. She’s the one who did the work, after all. 

But you love your father, unashamedly. Your mother you love with a wariness, as if you can sense even at a young age she doesn’t love you quite like he does. 

He is the one who teaches you constellations, math, science, how to question everything. And on the rare occasion he drinks, he teaches you how not to ask the wrong questions.

Your mother teaches you different things. She pulls your thin blonde pigtails back and teaches you how to make them look thicker, how important it is even as a child to keep up your appearances. There is never a hair out of place on her, never a smudge of lipstick. This is the way she navigates the world, and so it is the way you learn to. Not with bared teeth but with a close-lipped smile, face betraying nothing.

You grow quickly, much quicker than they think you will, given your small size at birth. You learn from both your parents silence is better than anything else so you keep your mouth shut and eyes open. People talk to your parents about how “serious” you are as a child. Your mother worries. Your father says he loves you even on days you don’t speak at all. 

And then—

and then. 

Year 7. 

They’ve sent you off to boarding school, someplace for proper young ladies to learn proper things. Instead, the girls teach you how to use your voice to get what you want, how a wink and a smile will make any man fall to his knees. How to loudly yell “fuck off” to any whistle and every catcall. How to look good doing it.

These girls become the sisters you never had. You hold each other when boys and girls break your hearts, you hold back hair when you get too drunk off stolen wine coolers. 

And when your father dies in Year 9, sudden heart attack, they are the ones who accompany you to the funeral, holding your hand on the train back to Bristol. And when you stop speaking after the funeral, they are the ones who become your voice. The ones who convince you to go to therapy. 

You tell your mother this, quietly, the day after the mourners have left. 

"Therapy is unbecoming," she says, and she sips her tea and looks out the window. 

You can't find the words to explain that you think you need it. That you're losing time. You’ll look around and not remember where you are, realize that time has passed and you don’t know where it went. 

You spend the first two therapy sessions writing down this feeling, trying to explain it. The therapist is an older woman who chews on a pen cap, nods thoughtfully as she reads your thoughts. 

She tells you it’s dissociation. She gives you something to do when it comes back. Ties a rubber band around your wrist and tells you to snap it whenever you feel yourself floating away. 

And you try. God, you try. 

But sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes you spend days in bed with your knees to your chest and your headphones in. 

You miss your father. It is a persistent ache, not only of losing a parent but the loss of someone who understood you down to your marrow.

You dream of him, one night, wake up with your cheeks wet. And you pick up the journal your Gran gave you for your thirteenth birthday, back when you fancied being a writer, and you begin.

And this is how it starts. 

Your mother cries at your graduation, and you keep a small red notebook tucked in your purse, writing down anything that reminds you of your father. When you go off to university, it’s his voice you hear telling you how proud he is. And with your first degree. And with your second.

It is during a late-night phone call one night that your mother finally admits the truth. That he did not die of a heart attack, but that he hung himself in the basement. That he'd suffered from depression.

You wonder if the same beast is curled up between your ribs, ready to strike. 

"Therapy is unbecoming," she says again when you mention it for her, and you wonder if in some way her attitude is what caused him to die.

It's the last time the two of you talk until you move to London, hairbands on your wrist and boxes full of journals. You join the Criminal Investigation Department, find a small flat to live in.

The next time your mother calls she asks if you've found a husband yet. You hang up without answering and write a letter to your father about your frustration. 

She's proud of your promotions, sure. Just not as much as you want her to be, but then, you've stopped wishing when it comes to your mother. 

You mingle, date. Nothing serious. You bring men and women back to your flat and feel no regret when they leave in the morning because always, always you're too focused on your work. 

And you get better. You think you do. You see a therapist off and on, the most serious relationship you've had for years. Ring up some of the girls from university from time to time just to have someone to go to the pub with. 

You wait for the beast curled between your ribs to strike.

You're still waiting. 


End file.
